Zhuhai

Everything in Zhuhai starts on Lovers' Road, the palm-lined seaside boulevard that curls along the eastern shore. Its anchor is the Zhuhai Fisher Girl, an 8.7-metre figure assembled from seventy blocks of granite in 1982 by sculptor Pan He. She holds a pearl over her head, and the audio guide tells the tale she comes from: a dragon king's daughter who disguised herself as a fisher girl, fell for a local fisherman and paid for her bracelets with her life. Stand on the rocks beside her at dusk and the whole bay turns pink. A short stroll along the promenade, the Love Post Office leans into the romance theme with slow-mail letters and sea-view coffee, a sweet place to pause between stops.

The Fisher Girl looks out over Xianglu Bay, the gentle crescent of water that gives this stretch of coast its shape. Across the water, Yeli Island carries the Zhuhai Opera House, whose two shell-shaped halls, one large and one small, have become the city's modern silhouette. Come at blue hour, when the shells glow against the bay, and let the guide walk you from the fishing legend of the old waterfront to the concert hall that now defines the skyline.

Behind Lovers' Road rises Shijing Mountain, known to most visitors simply as Jingshan Park. A cable car climbs through forest to a ridge with the best panorama in the city: Xianglu Bay below, the opera shells, Macau's towers on the horizon. The park itself is a jumble of oddly shaped boulders, caves and stone carvings that children and photographers love in equal measure. At the foot of the hill, Haibin Park is the old seaside green, and its bathing beach is where Zhuhai families cool off on summer evenings.

In a valley on the city's western edge, Zhuhai rebuilt the imperial garden that Beijing lost. The New Yuan Ming Palace recreates eighteen of the forty scenes of the Old Summer Palace, burned by foreign troops in 1860: a lake, Qing-style pavilions and halls, and a western-style section with its famous zodiac fountain. It is part theme park, part history lesson, and the audio guide fills in the original story as you cross the bridges and courtyards.

Zhuhai's past survives in a ring of Lingnan villages. Beishan Village in Nanping is the liveliest: the Yang Clan Ancestral Hall, built in 1868 with fine Qing carvings, now shares its lanes with cafés, vintage shops and a spring music festival. Further north, Huitong Village is quieter, a grid of grey-brick houses and a clan hall preserved almost intact. Nearby, the old town of Tangjiawan was the seat of Zhongshan county from 1930 to 1934 under Tang Shaoyi, China's first premier, whose Gongle Garden estate still stands on the hillside; today the town is better known to families for the Pearl Land amusement park. Each village has its own audio guide, so you can listen to the clan histories as you drift from doorway to doorway.

The easy island day is Qi'ao Island, linked to Tangjiawan by bridge and bus. Rent a bicycle and ride between a mangrove wetland reserve with boardwalks and birdlife, a Ming-dynasty Tianhou temple, the car-free Baishi Street and the former residence of labour leader Su Zhaozheng. Jiuzhou Island, the closest of the offshore islands, is a weekend-only ferry ride from the city pier, a small green hump with a beach and sea views back to the Fisher Girl.

Zhuhai is flat along the coast and well served by buses; routes 9 and 99 run the length of Lovers' Road, bus 86 reaches Qi'ao Island, and the Zhuhai station at Gongbei connects by high-speed rail to Guangzhou and by a short walk to the Macau border. Hire a bike for the promenade, and keep the islands for a clear-weather day.